Sapphire designed a new AMD Cayman-based graphics card that's intended for sweet-spot SKUs such as Radeon HD 6950 1 GB. Seen here is one such card with the HD 6950 GPU. It uses an in-house blue PCB design with cost-effective components. The card is cooled by a custom-design dual-fan heatsink that uses a heat pipe-fed aluminum fin array. The fan speed is kept very low, making the card silent. The very same fan is used on Sapphire's single-fan cooler used on certain HD 6800 series graphics cards, that earned the reputation of being very quiet. It's unclear if Sapphire's card is factory-overclocked, or a base-model that's cheaper than AMD reference design models. Like many board partners, Sapphire will bundle a copy (paper license) of Dirt 3, with its new HD 6950.

So I take it this will be cheaper than other 6950s, although you do say it's unclear. If it is cheaper, it will definitely be a good buy, considering the 6950 is already a pretty damn good buy to begin with.

Who did the marketing blunder of saying "cost-effective" components... just say non-ref PCB/component layout.

Although if it's a 1Gb and priced right... loss of OC'n and flashablity might not be that bad. First how many card still at E-tailer can be flashed and if they still have that ability there the really pricey ones. There's the Sapphire 100312-2SR, which doesn't have the dual bios switch and word is it doesn't unlock, and it's been $225 -AR$30.

Considering Egg's had a XFX 6950 1Gb for $210 -AR almost since 1Gb hit market, a "Plain-Jane" 6850 1Gb with a little factory OC'n thrown in for good measure has a place. A card that would stand on it's own against the "non-ti" GTX560's (even pricey OC'd crowd), and come away with 8-10% improvement sounds like a good plan. Sure you can't OC it, but at $180 -AR; folks' should "take it for what it is", it will find a plenty of homes very quickly.